So I recently purchased my 15th building and after evicting all of the families that have lived here for many years now and doubling the rent to target some upstart tech families instead, I was feeling like I was in a pretty good spot to start collecting my returns and putting them towards my next building. But then one the washers broke, and I realized that although the previous Housing Provider was gracious enough to leave me their old equipment, they didn’t leave me the keys! Surprisingly this was the first building I’ve ever purchased that has laundry in it…normally I figure it’s too much hassle, tenants can just go to the laundromat but I wanted to try it out this time since they were already there. Anyway I couldn’t get into the maintenance hatch to see what was going on. So I unfortunately had to call a locksmith.

But you know what he did? He pulled a key out of his bag and just opened the hatch! I thought maybe he knew the previous Housing Provider but it turns out that although the coin box keys tend to be keyed specifically to that coinbox, the maintenance hatches typically use a standard key, especially on the kind of older model washer and dryers that we tend to maintain in a building like this. I asked him what key he had and he showed me, it was apparently a standard washer/dryer key called a “GR800”. I guess you can just get these on Amazon or wherever for like 20 bucks? Of course he charged me anyway for the visit, 100 bucks, I couldn’t believe it. It’s fine…I’ll just plan for taking that out of all of my tenants rent increase for next year. But this is when he showed me the vulnerability that honestly might even make that 100 dollar call out fee worthwhile.

Apparently using one of these GR800 keys you can just open the hatch and pull on the coin mechanism from behind? This just…turns the freaking thing on! I guess mine is an older model and some of them have protection against that but he explained further that for those units usually you can just short some wires together and it’ll turn on too. Some models have like a maintenance test mode lever inside of the boxes too…this is really helpful when you as the Housing Provider needs to test some stuff out without opening the coin box but it provides another method of attack against your generous laundry prices! There are other ways too, it really depends on the machine, but for the most part with access to the maintenance hatch you can turn the machine on without paying for it! I was appalled! I couldn’t believe it! I immediately ordered a new set of keys and locks, custom keyed this time, so that I can replace these.

But apparently it’s super common that most Housing Providers don’t know that with access to the maintenance hatch your tenants can just STEAL laundry cycles from you! Anyway I highly recommend that you check to see if your laundry machines maintenance hatches use one of the standard keys like the GR800 or similar keys and change them immediately! Otherwise your tenants might steal laundry cycles from you, which is totally unfair. You earned that money by providing housing for them and coming out to maintain your machines once every year or so. Driving in from the burbs is such a drag, just the gas alone! Ugh! Just do a web search for your specific brand and model to see what the standard maintenance hatch key is and make sure your maintenance hatches are custom keyed rather than relying on a standard key and trusting your tenants to be good. Imagine a whole building of tenants working together and sharing one of these keys, the losses to your bottom line would be severe! You might even have to hold off on buying that second boat you’ve been eyeing. You know the one. A small investment in your security now will pay dividends later!

Also note I asked a friend of mine who owns a laundromat and he said that he doesn’t have this issue, apparently laundromat machines don’t usually work this way. I looked into buying one of those instead but honestly it was easier and way cheaper to just re-key the lock.

And for any tenants that have read this far, you know who you are, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for even considering stealing from us. And you wonder why the rent goes up every year, we have to cover all the money you steal from us somehow!